He lit a match and dropped it. The shower stall contained the blaze. He let the flames leap way up.
The nozzle dangled outside the stall. He kicked on the water and sprayed it all out. The pages crackled down to black muck.
A wall phone was clamped above the toilet. Dwight dialed the fallback direct. He got three rings and “Yes?”
“We’re pulling out. I can’t do it.”
Joan said, “No,” and hung up.
I always know when something has ended. I opened my door, saw that silly boy on my porch and realized that many threads of my life had fully run their course. I did not ask him to elaborate on his statement; I did not tell him that I had glimpsed him here and there enough to know that he had to be a deft surveillance artist with considerable knowledge of me. His car was parked in my driveway. I walked over to grab the day’s newspaper off my lawn and saw that the boy had photographs of Joan Rosen Klein taped to the dashboard. In that instant, I knew: it is over.
He drove off. I grabbed my journal from its hiding place, liquidated my bank account, packed a bag and flew here. I doubted that Scotty would come here or risk exposure of our many crimes by siccing the LAPD on me. Instinct told me that the money was in Los Angeles and Reginald and the emeralds were here. Thus, I got on an airplane and flew to Port-au-Prince.
It is very black. I am a French-fluent black man, an American, a policeman. I have the gifted actor’s flair for assimilating language. I could never pass myself off as purely Haitian, but I have become proficient in Kreole French. Native people feel honored when foreign rubes attempt to speak their tongue and actually succeed at it. My proficiency and natural charm have given me carte blanche to indulge and observe.
I travel by foot and bicycle and stay in small hotels. I ask questions about Reginald Hazzard in French and English wherever I go. I describe the young black man with the burn-scarred face; I sometimes display my police credentials. Many people recall having seen Reginald, but no one knows where he is. I have all the time in the world to find him. I am not going back to America.
The Tonton Macoute has surveilled me on many occasions and has interrogated me four times. My American-cop status flummoxes them. They are all rogue cops and sense that I am one, as well. They have seen me distribute cash for tips on Reginald. I am certain that they know who he is and perhaps where he is now. Tonton men have told me the cautionary tale of another American policeman who felt compelled to explore rural Haiti. Wayne Tedrow was white and lacked my protective coloration. The Tonton men have never threatened me; they have implied that black Americans with financial resources can buy their way into anonymous security and live safely in Haiti as long as their money holds out. They have further implied that this may be the case with Reginald Hazzard and have yet further implied that perhaps I should go home.
I’m staying. The Tonton men accept it with some reluctance- because Haiti is a dangerous place, I’m a black cop who speaks their language with no small flair and because they seem to like me. A Tonton man told me that LAPD had queried them about my whereabouts. The Tonton had not yet responded. It had to be a secondhand query initiated by Scotty. I gave the man some money and told him to rebuff the query. He told me he would.
I am always jaunting about Port-au-Prince, the larger nearby towns and more remote villages. I drink klerin and trip on all manner of Haitian herbs. I herb-tripped and retraced Wayne’s last day on earth. A bokur mixed me a potion named after Wayne. It is the most breathless mindscape. I often see faces out of my past in entirely altered forms. I think of my life as a middle-class black kid, a left-wing poseur, a policeman, a homosexual, a faux black militant and a killer. I live in a contemplative and unburdened state. February 24, 1964, and everything I have done to claim profit from it feels entirely irrelevant.
I occasionally think of Scotty. I think of Wayne frequently and Mr. Holly most of all. I loved him in the manner that the morally afflicted love those people who most exemplify their complex will to assert and to survive. I think we knew each other. In the end, it led to nothing more than that. Given who I am, he is and we are, it was a bond of some solvency-and, on my part, affection. I am oddly nurtured by it now.
Rural Haiti compels me. It is akin to a rough-trade zone in East Hollywood. I have attended a number of voodoo ceremonies. I have seen men and women zombified. Groups of men follow me sometimes, but I never feel threatened. I think of Wayne and our discourses on the dream state. I want to be physically immobilized so that I can be utterly still and devoid of the will to summon conscious thought and reaction. I have a stash of wildly powerful herbs and blowfish toxin that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I carry it with me at all times. I seek stimulation and stimulation seeks me. I want to be chemically prepared to enhance any state of revelation that I may find myself in. I often recall my first conversation with Mr. Holly. It was during the Chicago police riot of summer ‘68. I was in a soutliside lockup, a racist-cop casualty who also happened to be a cop. Mr. Holly was in the early stages of entrapping me for
I recognized him from that day nearly eight years before. Wayne’s photograph was a flat, pre-disfigured image. This man was the man my doctor neighbor and I rescued from the robbery and the vicious police aftermath.
We said hello to each other. Reginald’s burn scars had faded and had left his dark skin blotched pink-white. He thanked me for saving him and told me he had heard rumors that a policeman had been asking questions. I was pointed out to him three weeks earlier. He had been following me since that time. He knew who I was at once. It took a long period of study for him to determine that I meant him no harm.
He had a bottle of klerin. We passed it back and forth. I did not press him for details on the robbery; he did not press me for details on my police career or my recent hometown celebrity. He knew a great deal about me. I sensed it readily and knew it would be ungracious to seek affirmation or in any way pry.
I asked Reginald if he felt safe in Haiti. Reginald said that he did, but added that he missed his mother a great deal. I did not mention his father’s death in the summer of ‘68, with Wayne Tedrow very much in its orbit. I did not mention Wayne as Haitian folk hero. I did not mention Wayne’s union with Mary Beth Hazzard or his quest to find the boy who so easily found me. He knew all of it, none of it, part of it or most of it. I understood that and again behaved decorously.
The sun fell low on the water. We sat silently much more than we talked. Reginald asked me if I had met Joan. I said that I had. Reginald placed an emerald in my hand and told me it was the very last one. I thanked him. He got up and walked away from me.
I bicycled into the Haitian interior. Villages were scattered along low mountain ridges and brush-covered plains. Fallen branches and sharp rocks shredded my tires. I continued on foot. The night grew darker. I sensed groups of men following me.